Classroom Instruction on Social Justice in the Nigerian Context: The Re-Constructionist Instructional Approach

Abstract

By reference to relevant literature and drawing from decades of teaching “teaching and learning” at various levels of education in Nigeria and elsewhere, this chapter presents a report on effective approaches to teaching Social justice in the Nigerian context using the Reconstructionist approach of Role-playing. Specific questions raised to guide the investigation were as follows: What is social justice? What is the Reconstructionist approach to classroom instruction? And what is a practical example of Reconstructionist classroom instruction in the Nigerian context? The Reconstructionist approach to classroom instruction involves the use of a collection of teaching and learning methods characterized by involvement of the learners in the teaching activities in ways that enable them to understand issues at the level of personal perception. Role-play, folktales, and storytelling are some examples of effective teaching approaches in the traditional Nigerian education context, and they are the teaching strategies that can be effective in education in values such as social justice, in the Nigerian context. The use of the Reconstructionist pedagogy is predicated on the view that because of its alien origin, the school can facilitate value change in other cultures only by adopting strategies that are indigenous to the given cultural context. Reconstructionist instructional approaches constitute such strategies that have been effective in value education in pre-schooling Nigerian societies. Before generalizing the effectiveness of this approach, it is however recommended that it be tried out in the teaching of social justice in some other non-European cultural contexts.

Every race has a soul and the soul of the race finds expression in its institutions …No people can profit by or be helped under institutions which are not the outcome of their own character.

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1903)